Cruise ship

"Greece moved faster than other countries, creating a safe operating environment for cruises," Minister of Shipping and Island Policy Giannis Plakiotakis said, during his address at a Celestial Cruises event on the occasion of the launch of its cruise line.

Koper – The Koper cruise terminal is expecting 41 cruise ships with around 61,000 passengers this year, out of the initially planned 88 with around 130,000 passengers.

Locals in Montenegro's coastal resort towns fear another bad tourist season lies ahead, as most of the resorts on the Adriatic are still almost empty. The country is recording a high number of COVID-19 cases, restrictive health measures remain in force and curfew is enforced from 10 pm to 5 am. Intercity traffic is also prohibited.

The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) announced on Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with the Greek government for the creation of a framework so that cruise ships can carry out short-term berthing in Greeks ports at a time when cruise ports are closed for precautionary purposes.

The measures Greece and other countries have taken to contain the spread of Covid-19 have not yet impacted trade in Piraeus, officials involved with business in Greece's main port told Xinhua.

A Malta-flagged cruise ship which has carried 375 tourists from the Greek island of Rhodes to the popular Turkish resort town of Kuşadası, one of the important centers of Turkish tourism, has docked.

Some 375 tourists, mostly U.S. citizens, who came disembarked the cruise, entered the country, after undergoing thermal camera control, a precaution against the coronavirus.

Concerns are growing over the impact of the coronavirus on tourism and shipping, the two pillars of the Greek economy.

As work got under way on Piraeus Port Authority's (OLP) new cruise terminal on Tuesday, top officials of global cruise tourism giants Carnival and Royal Caribbean expressed confidence that it would reposition Greece's main port at the center of the Mediterranean cruise market.

Today the Israeli authorities confirmed the first case of infection with the new coronavirus. This is a passenger who was aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship and who was repatriated earlier this week, France reported.

An A380 passenger plane left Portugal on Jan. 30 en route to pick up hundreds of Europeans in China who want to escape the new virus and Italian authorities were keeping some 6,000 passengers on a cruise ship while they checked for a possible infection.